Re:publica 08 #4 (Wrap-up)

So re:publica 08 is over, it’s the week after and things are back to normal. I’m only posting this just now since my weekend pretty much went into moving to a new apartment, but now that I’ve settled in, I’m back on a more regular schedule after after a trip to New York and San Francisco and visiting the blogger conference.

To quickly wrap things up, re:publica was fun, and again very well organized. A big thanks to Newthinking and Spreeblick!

One thing that struck me as noteworthy was how many attendees used Twitter. Twitter was all over the place, much more than last year, when the odd (and oddly addictive) messaging service/social network hit mainstream at SXSW. (If you’re on Twitter, say hi.) Probably this was the highest Twitter density ever reached in Germany. Twitter was so ubiquitous that it pretty much made obsolete the SMS wall behind the main panel, so we had several layers of meta discussion at all times: While in the background text messages (and the occasional tweet) were projected, there was a much more lively backchannel via Twitter. Also, this made it pretty clear how much of an echo chamber Twitter still is, with mostly Social Media folks using it while the outside world hasn’t even noticed.

Speaking of echo chambers, Alana Taylor did a fun, brief video poll among students around NYU, asking them about Facebook, Flickr and Twitter:

(Admittedly, I was surprised how few folks were familiar with Flickr, which I always had down as quite mainstream..?)

The whole event was, of course, not just about content, but also about meeting folks, so networking was high on the agenda. The location, called Kalkscheune, is a great venue in that respect, as it has smaller workshop rooms, a big panel room, a coffeeshop-style lobby as well as a nice backyard, and it’s located very centrally in Berlin Mitte.

Someone (who, by the way?) also tried to facilitate networking by printing out Twitter follower stickers, so you could tag, or rather: follow, your fellow attendees Twitter-style with neat little stickers. Of course, this didn’t help the infamous conference-chat, which consists of not locking into people’s faces but at their name tags, but lots of stickers were seen, so obviously the concept resonated.

I had the chance to meet a whole bunch of folks, but since I couldn’t be there all the time, I’m sure I’ve also missed quite a few. If you had planned to get in touch, please do, via email, Twitter or what you prefer.